A History of Rome During the Later Republic and Early Principate

by A. H. J. Greenidge

But there were men in Rome who measured human life by other canons: who believed that the State existed for the individual at least as much as the individual for the State: who, even when they were imperialists, saw with terror the rotten foundations on which the empire rested, and with indignation the miserable returns that had been made to the men who had bought it with their blood. To them the brilliant present and the glorious future were veiled by a screen that showed the ghastly spectres of commercial imperialism. It showed luxury running riot amongst a nobility already impoverished and ever more thievishly inclined, a colossal capitalism clutching at the land and stretching out its tentacles for every source of profitable trade, the middle class fleeing from the country districts and ousted from their living in the towns, and the fair island that was almost a part of their Italian home, its garden and its granary, in the throes of a great slave war.

CHAPTER II

A cause never lacks a champion, nor a great cause one whom it may render great. Failure is in itself no sign of lack of spirit and ability, and when a vast reform is the product of a mean personality, the individual becomes glorified by identification with his work. From this point of view it mattered little who undertook the task of the economic regeneration of the Roman world. Any senator of respectable antecedents and moderate ability, who had a stable following amongst the ruling classes, might have succeeded where Tiberius Gracchus failed; it was a task in which authority was of more importance than ability, and the sense that the more numerous or powerful elements of society were united in the demand for reform, of more value than individual genius or honesty of purpose. This was the very circumstance that foreshadowed failure, for the men of wide connections and established fame had shrunk from an enterprise with which they sympathised in various degrees. In the proximate history of the Republic there had been three men who showed an unwavering belief in the Italian farmer and the blessings of agriculture. These were M. Porcius Cato, P. Cornelius Scipio and Ti. Sempronius Gracchus. But the influence of Cato's house had become extinct with its first founder. The elder son, an amiable man and an accomplished jurist, had not out-lived his father; the second still survived, but seems to have inherited little of the fighting qualities of the terrible censor. The traditions of a Roman house needed to be sustained by the efforts of its existing representative, and the "newness" of the Porcii might have necessitated generations of vigorous leaders to make them a power in the land. Scipionic traditions were now represented by Aemilianus, and the glow of the luminary was reflected in paler lights, who received their lustre from moving in that charmed orbit. One of these, the indefatigable henchman Laelius, had risen to the rank of consul, and stimulated by the vigorous theorisings of his hellenised environment, he contemplated for a moment the formation of a plan which should deal with some of the worst evils of the agrarian question. But he looked at the problem only to start back in affright. The strength and truculency of the vested interests with which he would have to deal were too much for a man whose nerve was weakened by philosophy and experience, and Laelius by his retreat justified, if he did not gain, the soubriquet which proclaimed his "sapience".[299] But why was Scipio himself idle? The answer is to be found both in his temperament and in his circumstances. With all his dash and energy, he was something of a healthy hedonist. As the chase had delighted him in his youth, so did war in his manhood. While hating its cruelties, he gloried in its excitement, and the discipline of the camp was more to his mind than the turbulence of an assembly. His mind, too, belonged to that class which finds it almost impossible to emancipate itself from traditional politics. His vast knowledge of the history of other civilisations may have taught him, as it taught Polybius, that Rome was successful because she was unique.[300] Here there was to be no break with the past, no legislator posing as a demi-god, no obedience to the cries of the masses who, if they once got loose, might turn and rend the enlightened few, and reproduce on Italian soil the shocking scenes of Greek socialistic enterprise. As things were, to be a reformer was to be a partisan, and Scipio loved the prospect of his probable supporters as little as that of his probable opponents. The fact of the Empire, too, must have weighed heavily with a man who was no blind imperialist. Even though economic reform might create an added efficiency in the army, Scipio must have known, as Polybius certainly knew, that soldiers are but pawns in the great game, and that the controlling forces were the wisdom of the conservative senator, the ambition of the wealthy noble, and the capital of the enterprising knight. The wisdom of disturbing their influence, and awakening their resentment, could scarcely appeal to a mind so perfectly balanced and practical as Scipio's. Circumstances, too, must have had their share in determining his quiescence. The Scipios had been a power in Rome in spite of the nobility. They were used because they were needed, not because they were loved, and the necessary man was never in much favour with the senate. Although there was no tie of blood between Aemilianus and the elder Scipio, they were much alike both in fortune and in temperament. They had both been called upon to save military situations that were thought desperate; their reputation had been made by successful war; and though neither was a mere soldier, they lacked the taste and the patience for the complicated political game, which alone made a man a power amidst the noble circles and their immediate dependants at Rome.

But the last generation had seen in Tiberius Gracchus a man whose political influence had been vast, a noble with but scant respect for the indefeasible rights of the nobility and as stern as Cato in his animadversions on the vices of his order, a man whose greatest successes abroad had been those of diplomacy rather than of war, one who had established firm connections and a living memory of himself both in West and East, whose name was known and loved in Spain, Sardinia, Asia and Egypt. It would have been too much to hope that this honest old aristocrat would attempt to grapple with the evils which had first become manifest during his own long lifetime; but it was not unnatural that people should look to a son of his for succour, especially as this son represented the blood of the Scipios as well as of the Gracchi. The marriage of the elderly Gracchus with the young Cornelia had marked the closing of the feud, personal rather than political, which had long separated him from the elder Scipio: and a further link between the two families was subsequently forged by the marriage of Sempronia, a daughter of Cornelia, to Scipio Aemilianus. The young Tiberius Gracchus may have been born during one of his father's frequent absences on the service of the State.[301] Certainly the elder Gracchus could have seen little of his son during the years of his infancy. But the closing years of the old man's life seem to have been spent uninterruptedly in Italy, and Tiberius must have been profoundly influenced by the genial and stately presence that Rome loved and feared. But he was little more than a boy when his father died, and the early influences that moulded his future career seem to have been due mainly to his mother. Cornelia would have been the typical Roman matron, had she lived a hundred years earlier; she would then have trained sons for the battlefield, not for the Forum. As it was, the softening influences of Greek culture had tempered without impairing her strength of character, had substituted rational for purely supernatural sanctions, and a wide political outlook for a rude sense of civic duty. Herself the product of an education such as ancient civilisations rarely bestowed upon their women, she wrote and spoke with a purity and grace which led to the belief that her sons had learnt from her lips and from her pen their first lessons in that eloquence which swayed the masses and altered the fortunes of Rome.[302] But her gifts had not impaired her tenderness. Her sons were her "Jewels," and the successive loss of nine of the children which she had borne to Gracchus must have made the three that remained doubly dear. The two boys had a narrow escape from becoming Eastern princes: for the hand of the widow Cornelia was sought in marriage by the King of Egypt.[303] Such an alliance with the representative of the two houses of the Gracchi and the Scipios might easily seem desirable to a protected king, although the attractions of Cornelia may also have influenced his choice. She, however, had no aspirations to share the throne of the Lagidae, and the hellenism of Tiberius and of his younger brother Caius, though deep and far-reaching, was of a kind less violent than would have been gained by transportation to Alexandria. They were trained in rhetoric by Diophanes an exile from Mitylene, and in philosophy by Blossius of Cumae, a stoic of the school of Antipater of Tarsus.[304] Many held the belief that Tiberius was spurred to his political enterprise by the direct exhortation of these teachers; but, even if their influence was not of this definite kind, there can be little doubt that the teaching of the two Greeks exercised a powerful influence on the political cast of his mind. Ideals of Greek liberty, speeches of Greek statesmen who had come forward as champions of the oppressed, stories of social ruin averted by the voice and hand of the heaven-sent legislator, pictures of self-sacrifice and of resigned submission to a standard of duty—these were lessons that may have been taught both by rhetorician and philosopher. Nor was the teaching of history different. In the literary environment in which the Gracchi moved, ready answers were being given to the most vital questions of politics and social science. Every one must have felt that the approaching struggle had a dual aspect, that it was political as well as social. For social conservatism was entrenched behind a political rampart: and if reform, neglected by the senate, was to come from the people, the question had first to be asked, Had the people a legal right to initiate reform? The historians of that and of the preceding generation would have answered this question unhesitatingly in the affirmative. The de facto sovereignty of the senate had not even received a sanction in contemporary literature, while to that of the immediate past it was equally unknown. The Roman annalists from the time of the Second Punic War had revealed the sovereignty of the people as the basis of the Roman constitution,[305] and the history of the long struggle of the Plebs for freedom made the protection of the commons the sole justification of the tribunate. From the lips of Polybius himself Tiberius may have heard the impression which the Roman polity made on the mind of the educated Greek: and the fact that this was a Greek picture did not lessen its validity; for the Greek was moulding the orthodox history of Rome, and the victims of his genius were the best Roman intellects of the day. He might have learnt how in this mixed constitution the people still retained their inalienable rights, how they elected, ratified, and above all how they punished.[306] He might have gathered that the identification of the tribunate with the interests of the nobility was a perversion of its true and vital function: that the tribune exists but to assist the commons and can be subject to no authority but the people's will, whether expressed directly by them or indirectly through his colleagues.[307] The history of the Punic wars did indeed reveal, in the fate of a Varro or a Minucius, how popular insubordination might be punished, when its end was wrong. Polybius's own voice was raised in prophetic warning against a possible demagogy of the future.[308] But that history showed the healthy discipline of a healthy people—a people that had vanquished genius through subordination, a peasant class whose loyalty and tenacity were as great as those of its leaders, and without whom those leaders would have been helpless. Where was such a class to be found now? Change the subject or turn the page, and the Greek statesman and historian could point to the dreadful reverse of this picture.[309] He could show a Greek nation, gifted with political genius but doomed to political decay—a nation whose sons accumulated money, lived in luxury with little forethought for the future, and refused to beget children for the State: a nation with a wealthy and cultured upper class, but one that was literally perishing for the lack of men.[310] Was this the fate in store for Rome? A temperament that was merely vigorous and keen might not have been affected by such reflections. One that was merely contemplative might have regarded them only as a subject for curious study. But Tiberius's mind ran to neither of these two extremes. He was a thoughtful and sensitive man of action. Sweet in temper, staid in deportment, gentle in language, he attracted from his dependants a loyalty that knew no limits, and from his friends a devotion that did not even shrink from death on his behalf. Even in his pure and polished oratory passion revealed itself chiefly in appeals to pity, not in the harsher forms of invective or of scorn. His mode of life was simple and restrained, but apparently with none of the pedantic austerity of the stoic. In an age that was becoming dissolute and frivolous he was moral and somewhat serious.[311] But his career is not that of the man who burdens society with the impression that he has a solemn mission to perform. Such men are rarely taken as seriously as they take themselves; they do not win aged men of experience to support their cause; the demeanour that wearies their friends is even likely to be found irksome by the mob.

Roman society must have seen much promise in his youth, for honours came early. A seat at the augural board was regarded as a tribute to his merit rather than his birth;[312] and indeed the Roman aristocrats, who dispensed such favours, were too clever to be the slaves of a name, when political manipulation was in question and talent might be diverted to the true cause. His marriage was a more important determinant in his career. The bride who was offered him was the daughter of Appius Claudius Pulcher, a man of consular and censorian rank and now Princeps of the senate,[313] a clever representative of that brilliant and eccentric house, that had always kept liberalism alive in Rome. Appius had already displayed some of the restless individuality of his ancestors. When the senate had refused him a triumph after a war with the Salassi, he had celebrated the pageant at his own expense, while his daughter, a vestal, walked beside the car to keep at bay the importunate tribune who attempted to drag him off.[314] A similar unconventionality was manifested in the present betrothal. The story runs that Appius broached the question to Tiberius at an augural banquet. The proposition was readily accepted, and Appius in his joy shouted out the news to his wife as he entered his own front door. The lady was more surprised than annoyed. "What need for all this haste," she said, "unless indeed you have found Tiberius Gracchus for our girl?" [315] Appius, hasty as he was, was probably in this case not the victim of a sudden inspiration. The restless old man doubtless pined for reform; but he was weighed down by years, honours and familiarity with the senate. He could not be the protagonist in the coming struggle; but in Tiberius he saw the man of the future.

The chances of the time favoured a military even more than a political career; the chief spheres of influence were the province and the camp, and it was in these that the earliest distinctions of Tiberius were won. When a lad of fifteen he had followed his brother-in-law Scipio to Africa, and had been the first to mount the walls of Carthage in the vain assault on the fortress of Megara.[316] He had won the approval of the commander by his discipline and courage, and left general regret amongst the army when he quitted the camp before the close of the campaign. But an experience as potent for the future as his first taste of war, must have been those hours of leisure spent in Scipio's tent.[317] If contact with the great commander aroused emulation, the talk on political questions of Scipio and his circle must have inspired profound reflection. Here he could find aspirations enough; all that was lacking was a leader to translate them into deeds. The quaestorship, the first round of the higher official ladder, found him attached to the consul Mancinus and destined for the ever-turbulent province of Spain. It was a fortunate chance, for here was the scene of his father's military and diplomatic triumphs. But the sequel was unexpected. He had gone to fulfil the duties of a subordinate; he suddenly found himself performing those of a commander-in-chief or of an accredited representative of the Roman people. The Numantines would treat only with a Gracchus, and the treaty that saved Roman lives but not Roman honour was felt to be really his work. In a moment he was involved in a political question that agitated the whole of Rome. The Numantine treaty was the topic of the day. Was it to be accepted or, if repudiated, should the authors of the disaster, the causes of the breach of faith, be surrendered in time-honoured fashion to the enemy as an expiation for the violated pledge? On the first point there was little hesitation; the senate decided for the nullity of the treaty, and it was likely that this view would be accepted by the people, if the measures against the ratifying officials were not made too stringent. For on this point there was a difference of opinion. The poorer classes, whose sons and brothers had been saved from death or captivity by the treaty, blamed Mancinus as the cause of the disaster, but were grateful to Tiberius as the author of the agreement. Others who had less to lose and could therefore afford to stand on principle, would have enforced the fullest rigour of the ancient rules and have delivered up the quaestor and tribunes with the defaulting general.[318] It was thought that the influence of Scipio, always great with the agricultural voters, might have availed to save even Mancinus, nay that, if he would, he might have got the peace confirmed.[319] But his efforts were believed to have been employed in favour of Tiberius. The matter ended in an illogical compromise. The treaty was repudiated, but it was decreed that the general alone should be surrendered.[320] A breach in an ancient rule of religious law had been made in favour of Tiberius.

But, in spite of this mark of popular favour, the experience had been disheartening and its effect was disturbing. Although it is impossible to subscribe to the opinion of later writers, who, looking at the matter from a conservative and therefore unfavourable aspect, saw in this early check the key to Tiberius's future action,[321] yet anger and fear leave their trace even on the best regulated minds. The senate had torn up his treaty and placed him for the moment in personal peril. It was to the people that he owed his salvation. If circumstances were to develop an opposition party in Rome, he was being pushed more and more into its ranks. And a coolness seems to have sprung up at this time between him and the man who had been his great exemplar. Tiberius took no counsel of Scipio before embarking on his great enterprise; support and advice were sought elsewhere. He may have already tested Scipio's lack of sympathy with an active propaganda; shame might have kept back the hint of a plan that might seem to imply a claim to leadership. But it is possible that there was some feeling of resentment against the warrior now before Numantia, who had done nothing to save the last Numantine treaty and the honour of the name of Gracchus.

His reticence could scarcely have been due to ignorance of his own designs; for his brother Caius left it on record that it was while journeying northward from Rome on his way to Numantia that Tiberius's eyes were first fully opened to the magnitude of the malady that cried aloud for cure.[322] It was in Etruria, the paradise of the capitalist, that he saw everywhere the imported slave and the barbarian who had replaced the freeman. It was this sight that first suggested something like a definite scheme. A further stimulus was soon to be found in scraps of anonymous writing which appeared on porches, walls and monuments, praying for his succour and entreating that the public land should be recovered for the poor.[323] The voiceless Roman people was seeking its only mode of utterance, a tribune who should be what the tribune had been of old, the servant of the many not the creature of the few. To Gracchus's mother his plans could hardly have been veiled. She is even said to have stimulated a vague craving for action by the playful remark that she was still known as the mother-in-law of Scipio, not as the mother of the Gracchi.[324]

But there was need of serious counsel. Gracchus did not mean to be a mere demagogue, coming before the people with a half-formed plan and stirring up an agitation which could end merely in some idle resolution. There were few to whom he could look for advice, but those few were of the best. Three venerable men, whose deeds and standing were even greater than their names, were ready with their support. There was the chief pontiff, P. Licinius Crassus Mucianus, the man who was said to combine in a supreme degree the four great blessings of wealth, birth, eloquence and legal lore;[325] there was the brother of Crassus, P. Mucius Scaevola,[326] the greatest lawyer of his age and already destined to the consulship for the following year; lastly there was Tiberius's father-in-law, the restless Appius, now eagerly awaiting the fulfilment of a cherished scheme by the man of his own choice.[327]

Thus fortified, Tiberius Gracchus entered on his tribunate, and formulated the measure which was to leave large portions of the public domain open for distribution to the poor. In the popular gatherings with which he opened his campaign, he dwelt on the nature of the evils which he proposed to remedy. It was the interest of Italy, not merely of the Roman proletariate, that was at stake.[328] He pointed out how the Italian peasantry had dwindled in numbers, and how that portion of it which still survived had been reduced to a poverty that was irremediable by their own efforts. He showed that the slave gangs which worked the vast estates were a menace, not a help, to Rome. They could not be enlisted for service in the legions; their disaffection to their masters was notorious; their danger was being proved even now by the horrible condition of Sicily, the fate of its slave-owning landlords, the long, difficult and eventful war which had not even yet been brought to a close.[329] Sometimes the language of passion replaced that of reason in his harangues to the crowds that pressed round the Rostra. "The beasts that prowl about Italy have holes and lurking-places where they may make their beds. You who fight and die for Italy enjoy but the blessings of air and light. These alone are your heritage. Homeless, unsettled, you wander to and fro with your wives and children. Our generals are in the habit of inspiring their soldiers to the combat by exhorting them to repel the enemy in defence of their tombs and ancestral shrines. The appeal is idle and false. You cannot point to a paternal altar, you have no ancestral tomb. No! you fight and die to give wealth and luxury to others. You are called the masters of the world; yet there is no clod of earth that you can call your own." [330]